The Goat That Called My Name and Other Horror Stories

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Federico Castro (0:21)

The sound of my front door woke me up. I opened my eyes, turned toward my little sister's bed, and it was empty. I went out to look for her and found the door open. She had gone outside. I started searching in two directions and found her in the back patio, staring at the trees toward the darkness. She seemed to be asleep, but she was standing up, nodding her head at someone speaking from the deepest part of the night.

Good stories tonight, community. Stay for the whole episode because you're going to enjoy it. You've heard of animals that behave strangely, as if they understand more than they should, as if there were something sinister about them. The first story is going to take us to a dark place and make us wonder whether we really know our neighbors, or whether something wicked might be very close to us. The second seems dedicated to everyone who listens to Tales of the Night hoping to become a protagonist. Believe me, if you haven't become one yet, you're better off that way. We won't waste any more time because it's already time to step into the following Tales of the Night.

Hello, dear community. Thank you for listening. My name is Federico Castro, though since childhood, everyone calls me Fede, and I want to tell you something that happened when I was 15

It's a story that comes up from time to time when I'm with my family, but the truth is we don't like talking about it much, especially my sister. I have lived practically my whole life in the same house, and I say practically because there was one year when we had to leave because of a problem that wasn't even ours. The house where we lived had no clear legal owner. The landlady died and her children started fighting over the property. My parents had been renting there for many years, since before I was born, and they knew the family well. But in the middle of all that dispute, one of the sons decided he wanted to occupy the house and asked us to leave.

It all happened very quickly. My parents looked for somewhere to rent and found a house a few streets away. It was smaller, but it was close to our schools and to my dad's work, and there wasn't much to choose from with so little time. So we moved there thinking it would be temporary, while we waited to see what happened with the other house. The new little house was fine. We never felt anything strange inside. What gave us an uneasy feeling, what made us uncomfortable, was the house next door. Well, I'm not even sure I would call it a house. It was a small wooden room, very small, built almost in the middle of a fairly large plot of land. There were many trees, too many for that size, too many for that area, and from the street you could see almost nothing because the whole plot was surrounded by a wooden fence covered in vines. They seemed to have been growing there for years. They were so thick you couldn't see through except in one spot.

In the back, our rear patio bordered that land, and right in the corner, the plants hadn't fully covered the fence. There was a gap between the branches, and through it you could make out the trees and further back the little house. You could also see it from my parents' bedroom. At first it just made us curious because we never saw anyone coming or going. I asked once who lived there and my parents didn't really know either. Someone must have been living there because from time to time you could see a light inside the house, a yellow light, very, very faint. Later we found out the house had no electricity, no water, no utilities at all. I never understood what they used for light. I assumed candles or oil lamps or something like that.

The thing was we rarely heard anything during the day, but at night it was different. My younger sister's name is America. At the time she was eight, and because the house was smaller, we had to share a bedroom. She started waking me up every night.

I would open my eyes and see her sitting in her bed.